Mixing visual media for cultural heritage

The Cultural Heritage (CH) domain is a field where many different visual media are constituent elements of the main activities: study, conservation, dissemination, and presentation to the public (museum visitors, tourists, practitioners). Those media are usually used in isolation, adopting specific visualization tools. This paper aims to present several experiences where multiple visual media have been used in a coordinated manner by fusing or presenting them in the same visualization context. These approaches experimented with new interaction and visualization methodologies to use different media in a synergic way. CH domain is an ideal field of experimentation of the potential of media integration/fusion/ cross-analysis. According to our understanding, using multiple media can improve insight capability. We guide the reader in the analysis of some pioneering experiences and approaches and try to deduce, for each of them, the potential improvement granted in terms of data communication or analysis. A final discussion tries to highlight the work needed for a wider acceptance and increased impact of those approaches.